My Other Son
by enzhe
Summary: Really, the last thing any of them wanted was to leave their baby boys all lone. Stuck in an elevator in the afterlife, it doesn't take too long for a Marauder, a Kage, and two redheads to find a loophole or two. Anthology.
1. Two Redheads and an Elevator

All was peaceful in the Celestial Elevators.

Well, mostly peaceful.

"We shouldn't have trusted him," Lily whispered, face white. In spite of being dead, both she and James looked rather good. They were dressed in their favorite outfits and looked to be in the full bloom of youth, which of course they should have been.

If they weren't quite so dead.

"Always with the regrets," muttered their personal shinigami, poking irritably at the walls of the elevator with the tip of his scythe.

Lily ignored him. "Peter… how could it be Peter? We would have known! Oh James, our poor Harry—he's just a—"

"—baby," came the enraged voice of quite another woman. The elevator doors slid open.

"On duty too, I see, Scrabgum," muttered the Potter's shinigami as a colleague of his ushered a hopping mad redhead into the lift. "Yours one of the pitiful 'if only-ers' too?"

"How could I agree to such a hair-brained scheme?" thundered the new redhead. "Of all the arguments to lose! If he wanted to win an argument so badly, I could've given in on the one about wearing socks to bed—eventually—"

Scrabgrum, the angry woman's deathly escort, inched as far away from his charge as he could possibly get within the very confined space of the elevator, which meant he was squeezing himself in between Lily and James.

"—If it hadn't been such a tragic moment—got swept up in the emotion, oh I never was good with rule twenty-five—"

"They called her 'The Bloody Habanero'" Scrabgum confided to the Potter's shinigami, shuddering fearfully.

"Um—excuse me—but did you say something about a baby?" ventured Lily, wondering if another woman was feeling her heartbreak. And she appeared to be right on the mark.

"Ye-e-e-es!" sobbed the 'Bloody Habanero', turning to look at the other souls in the elevator for the first time. "My precious little Naruto! I only knew him for an hour—oh my poor baby—and I lo-o-ove him SO MUCH—" she became incoherent for a few words, wiping sloppily at her cheeks and nose— "and his father went and sealed the Nine-Tails in him! He'll be all alone! MY POOR NARUTOOOO!"

Lily felt tears pricking at her own eyes. "I had to leave my baby behind too," she managed between hiccups. James tightened his arms around her, but didn't raise his face from where he'd kept it buried against her shoulder in. "Our sweet Harry! My only comfort is that I was allowed to exchange my life for his—but he'll be all alone—"

"Oh for Pete's sake," huffed the Potter's shinigami in exasperation. "Here we are, taking you to Heaven, but is it ever good enough? Of course not! It's just moaning and groaning the whole time."

The Habanero's shinigami perked up a bit. "Say, I just downloaded that new tune—'Sorry, Bub, But This Ain't Heaven'—wanna give a listen?"

"Yes, please," said his colleague, and the huddled together over a glowing MP3 player, sharing the headphones.

The Habanero-woman paused in her hiccupping and snot-wiping to stare at them for a split second, then seemed to give herself a shake and turned back to Lily.

"My name's Kushina, what's yours?"


	2. Like ImpureWorldResurrection, But Not

"This hardly counts as a fair fight," announced the newly-swallowed Yondaime Hokage of Konohagakure, standing arms akimbo in a shinigami's stomach. "But have it your way, I guess."

A ferocious roar of gastric juices was his only answer.

"Just felt like giving you fair warning—hey, wait, is that—?"

A moment later, a ferocious-looking shinigami with a long white face and a sword clenched it its teeth widened its evil-looking eyes in complete shock, hands scrabbling at its suddenly empty belly.

Back in the Celestial Elevators, Lily and James Potter leapt in fright as a bright yellow flash ignited the tiny space. When they finished blinking the stars from their eyes, a tall blond man was throwing his arms around Kushina in an enthusiastic embrace.

There was an awkward pause.

"Minato," Kushina breathed, holding him with an air of great disbelief. "…weren't you swallowed by that shinigami you summoned?"

"Yep," said the blond man cheerfully. "But guess what? My Flying Thunder God technique works in the afterlife! Good thing you're dead too, or I wouldn't have any seals to flash to, but now we can be together!"

This was, apparently, quite the wrong thing to say,

"_Mi..na..to…_" growled Kushina, her long, long hair starting to shift on an invisible, angry wind.

"Keep it down, will you?" groused Scrabgum, turning up the volume on his mp3 player.

"_I'm going to kill you,_" promised Kushina. The Potters suddenly remembered that her shinigami had introduced her as "The Bloody Habanero" and held each other apprehensively.

"Eheh—darling—but we're already dead, right?"

"Not as dead as you're about to be. YOU SEALED THE NINE-TAILS IN MY BABY!"

"What is this Nine-tails thingy you keep bringing up?" cut in James, hoping to distract the Habanero from what was threatening to be a very bloody rampage. He regretted it when Kushina turned her glare on him.

"It's a giant nine-tailed fox demon, that's what," she hissed. "The very embodiment of hatred and evil—I should know, I had to live with the stupid thing sealed into _me_ for most of my life—"

"Oh, so this must be Naruto's father," guessed Lily, connection the dots.

"That's me: Namikaze Minato, Kushina's husband," the blond introduced himself.

"Yes, Naruto's father, who sealed a _giant evil demon _in his son's belly and _left him_ to grow up _all alone,_" added Kushina.

"Just like our poor Harry," breathed Lily, getting teary again. "I swear I saw a bit of Voldemort latching on him to as were floating away—_nothing_ can be quite so evil as that horrible man—"

James and Minato exchanged anguished looks of helpless panic as their wives burst out into sobbing again.

"Saaaay…" said Minato after a moment, looking suddenly thoughtful. "You guys aren't from another dimension, are you? By any chance?"

"…Another dimension?" asked James, after a moment for blank stares.

"It's just—there was this theory of the Nidaime's—"

Kushina looked up, suddenly hopeful.

"Ni-Nidaime?" asked Lily hesitantly, only to be loudly shushed by Kushina.

"Hang on—he might be on to something. Come on, Minato, I might even forgive you if you can pull one of your genius stunts!"

"Well—if his ideas about death being relative to specific dimensions is actually correct—and that's a big if, but IF—there's a possibility that we could, sorta, switch dimensions, and finish each other's lives, so to speak."

James wrinkled his forehead in concentration. "Let me get this straight. You're saying that if Lily and I somehow made it to your dimension, we wouldn't be dead there?"

"In theory," said Minato.

"You're good with theories," added Kushina hopefully.

"But even if we did switch dimensions, what good would it do? I don't want to be alive if it's just to finish my life dimensions away from my baby," said Lily doubtfully.

"This is the sticky bit," continued Minato carefully. "The idea is that if a soul is introduced into a dimension in which it doesn't yet exist, it will be drawn to the existence that most closely echoes its own."

Kushina's shoulders slumped. "Well, that's no good. These two obviously aren't ninjas. I'll probably end up possessing some poor jinchuuriki."

"We're wizards," said James, looking mildly offended. "And we don't do human sacrifice."

"No, wait," said Lily softly. "Maybe we do have enough in common. We both just died defending our babies, didn't we? How many people can have just gone through that?"

"Right," agreed Minato gratefully. He looked earnestly at the other young couple. "Given any opportunity to do so, I promise to find, care for, love and protect your son as my own—and beg you to do the same."

Promises and handshakes were shared all around. A glance up at the long row of tiny buttons showed that they were nearing their first stop.

"Harry loves flying," Lily whispered urgently to Kushina, trying to pass on everything she could in the short time left. "And he hates bedtime—it takes forever to put him down but he does need his sleep—"

"I'll sing him hours of lullabies," promised Kushina. "I don't know Naruto yet—except that he spent the last 5 months using my bladder as a trampoline and practicing taijutsu on my ribs—but he'll need lots and lots and _lots_ of love and will probably pull horrible pranks—keep him away from pervy Jiraiya—make him eat vegetables—"

"No, find Jiraiya," commanded Minato. "He's our best bet for connecting our dimensions. We won't be able to cross over without ending up back here in the afterlife, but our boys might—"

"You mean we could see Harry again!" gasped Lily, clasping her hands in desperate hope.

"Maybe," said Minato. "I'll work on it from this side, get Jiraiya and the Sandaime on it from your side. Speaking of which, you'll need a password—"

"Get Dumbledore to help you," suggested Lily. "You'll have to explain yourselves to him anyway."

"I'm not sure we can trust Dumbledore, sweetheart," cut in James worriedly.

Lily stared right at Minato. "Trust Dumbledore," she insisted. "But find out about Sirius first. He's bound to have gone and done something stupid the minute he heard about us."

"She's right," said James quickly. "Find Sirius! He'll be getting himself into trouble for sure. The name's Sirius Black—rides a flying motorcycle—"

The elevator slowed to a stop.

"All right, you lot," groused the Potter's shinigami, regretfully removing an mp3 earbud from somewhere under his hood. "Of you go."

The doors chimed cheerfully as they slid open. Minato's hands blurred through handseals, and suddenly the Potters looked like the Namikazes and the Namikazes looked like the Potters.

"We'll get off here," whispered Minato. "The password is _Myoboku Seven._" Watch out for the man in the orange mask. He has a sharingan—"

"Tell Dumbledore I admit to The Left Shoe Theft," said James in a rush as Minato and Kushina were tugged out of the elevator. "Tell Harry we love him—"

"Every single day," promised Kushina, and the doors snapped shut again.

Lily and James held hands in silence, not looking at each other now that they looked like the two strangers whose son they'd promised to raise.

"…How are we getting to their dimension again?" asked James, after a while.

iIi

Scrabgum's friend ushered the couple who appeared to be the Potters up to their registration desk and stepped back, already feeling the swell of relief that came with the end of a shift. He just needed to see that these two were signed in, and—

"Rejected," snapped the Registrar. "Next, please."

"EH?" said the shinigami, scrambling up to the desk. "But these are my orders right here—"

"These are not the souls on the order."

"Yes they are, Lily and James Potter—"

"REJECTED."

"But—"

"RE. JEC. TED." The Registrar was sounding increasingly impatient. "Take them back where you got them from."

"But—"

The shinigami's objections died under a glare more than fierce enough to quell a god of death.

"Fine, fine," he muttered. "Okay, you lot—"

iIi

"—Down you go," ordered Scrabgum, looking a bit sheepish. "Seems there was a bit of a mixup, so we're sending you back until we can get things sorted out."

Lily and James straightened their shoulders, exchanged 'I love yous', and jumped.

iIi

"Lily…no…" moaned Snape, cradling the body of the only being he ever truly loved. Lily's son sobbed in his crib, terrified and waiting desperately for his mother to get up and comfort him. A lightning-shaped wound burned red and raw on his forehead.

A burst of intense magical energy erupted in the house and Snape jumped, holding Lily's limp form protectively with one hand while trying to point everywhere with his wand with the other. It was something he had never felt before—it was immense—

Lily was changing. The beautiful sunset-red of her hair was bleeding into a bright crimson and it was growing at an incredible speed—the rest of her seemed to be shrinking, growing shorter—her skin became tan and her muscles hard and defined—

Terrified, angered, and disgusted beyond belief, Snape dropped the woman and leapt back, mouthing wordlessly. He accidentally set the curtains on fire as sparks leapt from his wand.

The woman-who-wasn't-Lily stirred.

"Kushina?" came a voice from downstairs. "Love?"

"Baby," whispered the woman, blinking slowly before flowing suddenly to her feet. "Come here, sweet baby—don't cry—" she was at the crib in a flash, reaching towards the Potter child, turning her head to call over her shoulder. "I'm up here, sweetheart! You did it! We're back!" Lowering her voice to offer soft, soothing words, she filled her arms with sobbing toddler.

Snape aimed a wand with a shaking hand. "Don't. Move."

"Eh? Who are you?" asked the woman, and then Snape's world went black.

Minato stepped over the strange man's unconscious form. "I don't know what he was pointing at you, but I didn't like it," he explained. "We'll ask him when he comes around. Hello, baby," he said kindly to the black-haired child who was slowly calming in Kushina's embrace. "You must be Harry. Your mom and dad wanted you to know—how much they love you—"

iIi

Hiruzen Sarutobi stared warily as his successor and his successor's wife's bodies changed and came back to life, every sense strained to the max under the onslaught of otherworldly chakra.

"Lily?" mumbled the dark-haired man who had replaced Minato. "You there, sweetheart?"

"James," breathed the woman. "Let's find Naruto."

Tightening his hold around the newborn infant in his arms, Hiruzen signaled for his ANBU to move in.


End file.
